The Three Gorges Dam spans the Yangtze River in China and is the largest power generating plant in the world. While much of China’s vast countryside is only covered by low-res imagery, Google recently released new high-res images of the area around the dam, giving us our first real chance to write about it. First conceived around 90 years ago, the proposed dam was strongly supported by Chairman Mao in the 1950s. However, it wasn’t until the mid-90s that construction finally began on the dam, which is over 2km wide and 185m high. The statistics surrounding this project…